Kos: Poll data was fraudulent

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas renounced all polling conducted for his website by the firm Research 2000 Tuesday, citing an independent investigation that found the numbers produced by the firm were fraudulent.

According to a report published on his heavily-trafficked blog, Moulitsas says at least a portion of the data was “fabricated or manipulated.”

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“We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it,” Moulitsas wrote.

The explosive charge by the liberal Internet pioneer could invalidate dozens of polls taken in House, Senate and governor’s races that were aggressively touted by his popular website and widely covered by news outlets over the last year and a half.

“While the investigation didn't look at all of Research 2000 polling conducted for us, fact is I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else. I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling,” Moulitsas said, adding that Daily Kos would be filing a lawsuit against the polling firm within the next few days.

The Kos analysis, provided by political consultant Mark Grebner, retired physicist Michael Weissman and research technician Jonathan Weissman, found three main problems: A large set of number pairs were too often only even or odd numbers – rather than independent of each other, a set of polls on separate groups appeared too similar given statistical uncertainties and the consistent lack of change between week-to-week data gathering.

“People who have been trusting the R2K reports should know about these extreme anomalies. We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls,” wrote the authors.

Reached by POLITICO, Research 2000 president Del Ali referred all questions to his attorney, but offered, “I will tell you unequivocally that we conducted every poll properly for the Daily Kos.”

Ali’s attorney Richard Beckler would not comment on the specific findings of the report but called the assertions nonsense.

“All I can tell you is that I think Mr. Ali has been worked over the coals by these people. This report reads like gobbledygook. I think Kos is really off the reservation here and I think Kos doesn’t have any money and that’s why he doesn’t want to pay them,” Beckler said.

Moulitsas, who terminated his relationship with Research 2000 earlier this month, told POLITICO he has never had any billing disputes with the polling firm.

“Would I really risk the reputation of Daily Kos and expose all our commissioned polling as fraudulent because we didn’t want to pay some money? There are easier ways to get out of doing that,” Moulitsas said.

He pointed out that Research 2000 refused to cooperate with or respond to the report, which was delivered to the firm Monday.

“At one point, they claimed they couldn’t deliver [data] because their computers were down and they had to work out of a Kinko’s office. Research 2000 was delivered a copy of the report early Monday morning, and though they quickly responded and promised a full response, once again the authors of the report heard nothing more,” Moulitsas said.